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Italy Pledges €400,000 for Covid-19 Response in Libya

Head of National Center for Disease Control- Libya, Badreddine al-Najjar during meeting with Deputy Ambassador to Libya Walter De Martino (National Center for Disease Control)
Head of National Center for Disease Control- Libya, Badreddine al-Najjar during meeting with Deputy Ambassador to Libya Walter De Martino (National Center for Disease Control)
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Italy Pledges €400,000 for Covid-19 Response in Libya

Head of National Center for Disease Control- Libya, Badreddine al-Najjar during meeting with Deputy Ambassador to Libya Walter De Martino (National Center for Disease Control)
Head of National Center for Disease Control- Libya, Badreddine al-Najjar during meeting with Deputy Ambassador to Libya Walter De Martino (National Center for Disease Control)

The Italian government pledged to provide Libya a financial grant to help the country combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the southern region.

Deputy Chief of Mission at the Italian Embassy in Tripoli Walter De Martino said his country allocated €400,000 to support programs to combat the coronavirus in the affected areas in Libya. This came during his visit to the National Center for Disease Control.

The official also vowed to provide an adequate shipment of medical masks as part of the aid provided by the Italian government.

Martino praised the humanitarian medical mission team at the National Center on their successful performance at the COVID-19 hospital in Rome, where they worked and trained with medics to contain the pandemic.

Badreddine al-Najjar, the head of Libya's center for disease control, discussed with De Martino the local epidemiological situation and the efforts made to contain the spread of the virus.

Najjar reported that Martino praised the center’s efforts in combating the coronavirus in cooperation with international bodies and organizations.

Meanwhile, Libya reported 801 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 34,014.

The National Center for Disease Control also announced 384 new recoveries and 13 more deaths, raising the total recoveries in Libya to 18,902. The death toll stands at 540.

Despite the campaigns organized by local and international organizations, especially in western cities, Tripoli recorded the highest number of infections with 471 cases recorded in the past twenty-four hours.

A source at the National Center told Asharq Al-Awsat that some infected persons continue to transmit the virus widely, given that they do not follow the precautionary measures recommended by the Center.

The National Center for Disease Control launched training courses for medical personnel, in cooperation with the Arab Experts, at the center’s headquarters in Gorje.

The two-days course addressed diagnosing and treating the coronavirus, as well as implementing the infection control program in medical facilities.

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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.

In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.

Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.

In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.

By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.

But not everyone makes it in time.

On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.

But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.